Category Archives: Uncategorized

Cardinal Associates is pleased to count the Republican Governors Association, the Hogan for Governor Campaign, the Gillespie for U.S. Senate Campaign, the Virginia Senate Republican Caucus, the Virginia House Republican Caucus, and several individual candidates for state legislative racesas clients, and is currently working with several new clients, to be announced at a later date. Please contact us to discuss how we can partner with your campaign!

Previously, we reviewed data on each committee’s receptiveness to legislation coming before it, from the Committee on Local Government, which reports the vast majority of bills it hears, to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, which is the stingiest with legislation coming before it.

Member participation also varied among committees, with over 95% of the members of Courts voting on any given bill but fewer than 87% of those on Rehab doing so. Once again, Rules has been excluded from the analysis given the prevalence of voice votes, and C&L has been accorded a membership of ~15.65 to account for the expansion of the committee from 15 to 16 mid-session. Continue reading →

Although some of the legislative session’s most memorable moments emerge from impassioned debate on the Senate floor, the real work is done in committee—so much so that, optics aside, a bill’s defeat on the chamber floor is a rare event.

In all, there were 2,376 Senate floor votes during the 2014 regular session, but many of these were procedural: roll calls, moving bills through their readings, suspending the rules, and the like. By my count, just under 1,300 votes were substantive, though definitions are necessarily subjective. More objectivity is possible if we limit our analysis to votes on the final passage of legislation (excluding memorial and commending resolutions approved by voice vote); there were 955 such votes in 2014.